Title: Sans Merci (1/4)
Author: Brighid
Spoilers: Scully season 4, a few other teeny ones
Rating: PG-13. A bit weird and disturbing
Category: X
Keywords: Mulder & Faery
Summary: Mulder falls down the rabbit hole.
Archive: Yes, Gossamer, otherwise just keep my name & let me know.
Constructive feedback greatly appreciated. Please. Please. Please.

Disclaimer: All things X-files belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. This
is not for profit, but for love.

Author's note: I've been writing this story (and re-writing it) for months.
This is what triggered "More Full of Weeping", in truth, and then got
shelved. Thanks to Kelley for her beta -- any remaining problems are MY
FAULT. = )

Sans Merci

by Brighid

The wet pavement magnified the slap-slap of Mulder's footfalls as he ran
through the blustery October night. The chill damp bit into his lungs,
turned his exhalations into silvered clouds that wreathed his head, then
lingered in his wake. He felt the slow burn as he approached his own
runner's wall, pushed for it and through it to reach the endorphin high he'd
been seeking.

It really wasn't a good time for running. Too wet, too cold, too late and
too dark combined to make it a dangerous choice, and had Scully known what
he was up to, she probably would have handcuffed him to the motel room bed.
That was why he hadn't told her; had in fact made a point of slipping out as
noiselessly as possible. Wise or not, he needed the catharsis of running in
the dark silence, needed to run away from the demons that were chasing him
around inside his head.

Eleven dead little girls, little girls who should have been braiding
pigtails and trading Spice Girl stickers and planning what to wear for
Hallowe'en. Pictures of them crowded behind his eyes, black and white
crime-scene photos, utterly horrific in their stark simplicity. No pigtails.
No Spice Girls. No Hallowe'en. Nothing ever again. The pictures twisted and
writhed inside his head, and he lurched sickly, sure they would never leave
him, sure that he could never run away from them. The steady pace of his run
faltered, ground to a halt as he doubled over and vomited bad coffee and
sunflower seeds into the gutter.

The heaving went on forever, shaking him, emptying him of everything but the
memories he longed to leave behind. They had been on the case for seven
days, requested for his profiler background and Scully's forensics. It had
been seven days of looking at pictures, crawling through crime scenes,
trying to twist and turn his way into the brain of an animal that would
leave a seven year old bound to a playground slide by her own intestines.
Unable to sleep for the dreams or eat for the constant nausea, his nerve
endings were whipcord thin and jangling. A part of him wanted to give up,
give in, admit that he didn't have what it took to profile like this
anymore. Another, angrier part remembered the shattered face of one little
girl, plucked eyes dangling wetly against soft, round cheeks, and insisted
that he see it through, that he let himself be consumed utterly if it meant
one less victim, one reprieve from the nightmare deaths.

Time passed, and the heaves eased to slow shudders and then to stillness. He
stood, wiped his mouth and spat repeatedly to try and clear the foul taste.
A few deep breaths and he was running again. The night held no escape; his
demons kept pace with him all the way.

)0(

I watched him, watched him sick up all the darkness he'd swallowed. Smelled
the taint of unsainly things he carried inside. You could see the shadow in
him, and the light. He was one of possibilities, and I had great hope of
him. We all did. Heroes have been few and far between these thin days, and
we were sorely in need of a Hero. I followed him as he ran deeper into the
night, and waited for him to find his way into the Land.

)0( 

The low growl of motorcycles disturbed the rain-slicked streets. Mulder moved closer to the grass edge and stayed focused on his path, determined not to attract any more attention than a man running at midnight might g
arner. The last thing he needed was to piss off the resident biker
population. Scully would never forgive him if she had to bail him out of an
emergency room yet again in a strange city at ungodly hour. He thought at
first he had been successful, only to realize that while they weren't
overtaking him, they were clearly following him. He uttered a heartfelt
curse and tried to find a way to dart away, but the only path was straight
ahead to the bridge. He picked up his pace, pushing himself until his legs
ached and chest seared, hoping to reach some place of sanctuary. A roar of
engines told him that there was to be no sanctuary.

No longer content to trail him, they began to pace him, weave and dart
around him like a pack of dogs scenting the kill. He sensed that they were
playing with him, and that terrified him. He could feel the heat of them as
they skimmed by him, the vibration of their engines, the stagnant puff of
their exhaust. His tired body wavered, legs liquid and screaming; he
staggered, glancing off one bike and into another. The force sent him
sprawling sideways, crashing to the pavement. He made an abortive attempt to
cushion his head, but he was too tired, too graceless. He felt it crack
against the pavement, felt his brain crash against his skull; darkness
descended in the echoing wake.

His last conscious memory was a circle of silence around him, of looking
into blank, visored faces and seeing what looked like the reflection of
stars, and the ghostly outlines of  - antlers, rising up from the visors.
His peripatetic mind dredged up a name, Cernunnos, the horned God, but there
were too many of them; too, too many of them. He tried to speak, to ask them
what they were, but his tongue wouldn't work and the dark was rushing up to
meet him. He slipped into oblivion, and didn't stir when one of the Riders
scooped him up and carried him away.

)0(

We surveyed the one laid out before us, waiting for him to wake. Harry shook
his huge shaggy head, obviously disappointed. "He don' look much like a
Hero," he grunted sadly, stroking one giant callused finger over the drying
blood along the side of our guest's face. Almost absentmindedly he stuck the
finger into his mouth and sucked the blood off. "Don' taste like one,
neither," he continued with a sorrowful snuffle.

I looked at him, amused and annoyed. "Tasted many Heroes, have you, Harry?"

He grinned at me, his large teeth snaggled and yellowing and far too
wickedly curved. "A few, in my youngling days, 'afore I knew better."  The
grin faded. "We's can't be mistaking this, Tricky. The dark moon passes,
gotta pass, and if there isn't the other to make the return, then we be
stuck in the dark, we be lost, and the Unseelie win it all. We all'll be
dead 'afore we can know it, for they'll go a'hunting; they's got a taste for
mortal meat and fae flesh both!"

I paced the small room, hollowed out under the bridge, and nodded. "I know,
Harry, I know. But I've found and tested for Heroes a thousand times, and my
guts tell me he is one. And we haven't time to be too choosy. Tonight is the
darkness, tomorrow must come the light. We have to use what we've got."

A slow groan called our attention back to the man who was laid out on
Harry's bed. He was sitting up a little, prodding at his bloody temple, and
swearing steadily. Harry grinned at that, and laughed a little. "Well, then,
Tricky, y'may be right, for he's a-cursing as fine as any Hero I ever knew!"

For some reason, the observation reassured me. I needed whatever reassurance
I could find, for we were in dark times. I watched as the mortal's eyes
began to uncloud, and hoped that I had been right in my choosing. For if I
had been wrong -

- I could not be wrong.

)0(

Mulder came around to the sound of two voices, one a rattling boom, the
other raspy and quick and oddly familiar. He opened his eyes and his vision
swam into focus briefly before rolling nausea forced him to close them
again. He sat up a bit, prodded his aching head and started to swear when
his fingers came back sticky with blood. Great. Probably another concussion.
Scully was going to fucking kill him.

A cup was thrust into his hand, guided to his mouth. "Drink a dram. It'll
help." The taste was faintly bitter, herbal, but he swallowed. The hand
guiding his was impossibly large and meaty. Even with his eyes closed he
could feel the scars that criss-crossed and ridged over it. He tried opening
his eyes again, only to find himself staring at the largest, ugliest man
he'd ever seen.

He spat the mouthful out, scrabbled up the bed and part way up the wall.
"Shit!"

The ugly man laughed at that, and his breath rushed over Mulder, a fetid
wave. He gagged, almost lost what little he had swallowed. "Who the hell are
you?"

Another man moved into view, smaller and slighter and rather handsome, from
what he could see beneath the hooded cloak. "He's Harry," he offered, a
slight smile inviting Mulder in on the joke. Mulder took a second glance at
the giant and noted that he was, indeed, remarkably hirsute. He reluctantly
smiled back at the second man.

"Yeah, he is. Next question: where the hell am I?" he asked, sliding down so
that his buttocks once again rested on the mattress.

Harry smiled at him, the expression doing terrible things to his face.
"You's in m'hidey," he offered, booming voice painful in the battered
confines of Mulder's skull. "The Hunt brought you down, and we's to take you
to th'Lady once we's sure you no' addled yer wits." He thrust the cup back
at Mulder, gesturing for him to finish off the drink. "You's best drink up;
it'll make the head less achy."  Mulder felt the disbelief twitch across his
face, and Harry laughed. "No need to be scared, youngling. I's only eats
those that needs eating, and wouldn't taint me meat with poison 'aforehand,
anyway."

Mulder took the proffered cup and clasped it in both hands to keep it
steady. He had the distinct feeling that he's fallen down a rabbit hole with
this one. "Uh, thanks." He warily sipped the drink, and was amazed to find
it cleared his head. He turned his gaze to the second man; as with the
voice, something in the line of his body and the jade glow of his eyes was
disturbingly familiar. "Can you explain what he just said?"

The other nodded, coming closer to the bed. "I can try, but much will depend
on you. On your willingness to believe." He said is gravely, with a faint
inclination of his head, waiting for something.

Mulder set the cup down and pulled his knees up to his chest, then wrapped
long arms around until he made a tidy ball. "Go ahead. I've been known to be
open to - extreme possibilities." He allowed a faint irony to inflect the
words, unable to resist the small jab of self-mockery.

The other man came and sat across from him, carefully pulling back the hood
to reveal sharp slanting eyebrows and ears that peaked instead of rounding
out. "That's good, because I believe we are about to enter into something
very extreme indeed, and you are going to play a very large part."

Mulder resisted the urge to reach out and trace the line of brow so close to
him. "I am?" He made a small noise that could have been a hmmm or a hmmmph.
"Just don't tell me you're from Star Fleet."

The man smiled, and the amused wickedness plucked at Mulder's memory. "You
don't seriously expect me to believe you give credence to all those UFO
stories, do you? No, I'm not from outer space." The grin twisted a bit, grew
sharper. "I'm from Faery."

Mulder pressed his head against his knees, and felt the room spin. Somehow,
the situation just kept getting further and further away from him. He had a
sneaking suspicion that he was in a room somewhere in five-point restraints
with a lovely I.V.-drip of happy juice. Teach him to profile serial killers
again. He sighed and raised his head to meet the other's gaze . "Go on. I'm
listening."

)0(


Sans Merci

by Brighid

Well, he did listen. To his credit, he didn't scoff or jeer or even roll his
eyes as mortals are wont to do. He just sat there with his chin on his knees
and his eyes big in his face and listened to me tell him a story that was
his story, if he would but own his role in it.

I pride myself on being a good teller of tales; over my lifetimes I have
played many parts, and bard has always been one of my favourite. Tonight my
words had the weight of creation and chaos hanging in the balance, and I
think he caught the sense of it. When I reached the end he lifted one of his
long-fingered hands and worried at a knuckle with his teeth.

"Let me get this straight," he said at last, uncoiling a bit and letting his
feet swing over the edge of Harry's bed. "You need me to rescue the Queen of
Faery's daughter from the forces of evil, so that the new moon can rise
again and dispel their growing power?"

Harry nodded at that, so forcefully that I thought that his head might come
rolling off. It wouldn't have been the first time. "Essentially, yes. The
Court needs a champion, and the champion must be of mortal blood -- a wild
card against the Unseelie Court, since our powers are evenly matched, and
greatly lessened in the dark of the moon." I drew myself up to the full of
my height, imbued my words with all the Will I could muster. "You have been
found a Hero, and you have been called."

He sat in silence a moment longer, then buried his head in his hands and
began to shake. The tremors were violent, and if I'd a heart it might've
well broken at the sight. Harry, too, was moved, and he bent over the
huddled figure, embracing him roughly. "Na, then, youngling, it's not s'bad
as all that," he crooned in his sheet metal voice. "Tricky an me'll be with
you all the way, and you can be the Hero but not alone!"

Our chosen Hero lifted his head at that and I saw that while his face was
wet with tears, it was laughter that shook him. "Jesusshitfuck," he gasped
at last, pulling away from Harry's embrace. "You want me to rescue the
maiden in distress. Shit, have you got the wrong man!" He shook his head
again, and the laughter turned dark, far uglier than weeping. "Have you got
the wrong man," he said again, and it was mournful.

A shadow curled through me, and the faint flicker of hope I'd kindled dimmed
to almost nothing. If he was the wrong man, then all was lost.

)0(

Mulder felt the big man pull him roughly into his arms once again, felt
himself shaken until his teeth rattled. "Now don' you be saying that,
youngling. Tricky here says y'be a Hero, and he's seen more than his share.
Jus' 'cause you don' be feeling it here," a broad palm flattened against his
chest, "don' mean it ain't so. Hero's gotta go through fire to feel it, and
even then the cocky ones aren't worth much."

Mulder shook his head in automatic denial. "I've been through fire. Flood
and pestilence, too. If I was a rescuer of damsels in distress, I'd have my
sister back. Scully would be living happily somewhere with 2.3 kids. I'd
have a fucking social life - as it is, I'm just a sorry son of a bitch who
can't keep from puking over crime scene photos." Harry's arms gentled around
him, and he found himself leaning into the other despite his stench. "I'm
not your man."

The green-eyed man shook his dark head. "There is no one else, mortal. If we
fail, we lose the light forever. If we fail, it'll be not only our world
plunged into darkness, but yours as well. The Unseelie court feeds from you;
unchecked, they would decimate your kind. Already, during the waning their
predations have grown. Virgin girls defiled and consumed. That is what
brought you to us. That is how I knew you."

Mulder's head shot up at that, his body tightening. "The girls? They've been
the ones killing the girls?" His nostrils flared, like a hound scenting
prey. "They're the ones leaving them gutted and mutilated?" He felt
something very like rage move through him, slow and glacial.

The one called Tricky nodded, paced the small stone room. "Yes, that's their
handiwork. It's only the beginning of what they'll do if we do not get the
Maiden back." He rounded on Mulder, eyes ablaze. "A Hero needn't be
perfect -- he must only be willing to die if necessary. Please. I've not
begged for two thousand years, but I'll beg now if you need it." He made as
if to go down on one knee, but Mulder forestalled him.

"Save it. I'll do it. If all it requires is a willingness to die in the
attempt, then maybe I am your man." He grinned a little at that, remembering
a body on his apartment floor and the rumors of his death. "I'd prefer it if
somebody else does the dying, but we take what we can get."

Harry clapped him on the back. "You's on your way to being as fine a Hero as
ever I've seen, youngling!" he boomed as Mulder staggered under the blow.
"Let's get you cleaned up and over to th'Lady. She's a one to help us draw
up a plan, give you colors to wear!"

Mulder nodded. "Lead away." Whether he was truly stuck in Faery, or strung
out somewhere in a set of hospital restraints, he had a distinct feeling
that things were about to get interesting.

)0(

We walked together into the night air, and our Hero looked about himself
perplexedly. "You live under a bridge?" he asked Harry incredulously. "Shit,
I thought my place was a hole-."

Harry chortled. "That's m'hidey, right enough. Where else would y'be
expecting a troll, then, youngling?" He laughed even harder as the Hero's
eyes grew impossibly wide. "Rest easy, Hero. I's only eats those as needs
eating."

Hero slanted an oblique glance at me, then another at Harry. "What's your
definition of 'needs eating'?" he asked diffidently.

Harry scratched his head, picked something small and squirmy out and bit
into it with obvious relish. "Well, abouts a year ago there were a man who
sold wee girls, scarcely mouthfuls yet. Beat 'em something fierce, killed
one. He were greasy, but went down easy enough."

Hero paused, tilted his head slightly as if processing the information. A
moment later he nodded decisively. "I can live with that," he said, resuming
his stride. Harry clapped him on the back, sent him staggering. It appeared
as if the troll's earlier reservations were swiftly dissipating.

I pulled open my robe, pulled out the battered brass horn that lay against
my belly, and blew a single, piercing note. A moment later, three
motorcycles appeared, each driven by a silent, dark-helmed Rider. "Take us
to The Lady," I commanded, trying not to shiver under the blank gazes. They
were oldest magic, far before my nascency, a wildness left over from
creation. Without Owein's horn, they would just as likely hunt me as obey
me. If I squinted a bit, I could see pawing steeds beneath them and racks
worthy of stags crowning the biker helmets.

Hero slipped easily behind one of the Riders, clinging carefully. He glanced
at me, and mouthed the words "wild hunt?".  Some of the tension leached from
my body; good, he was not wholly ignorant. I nodded to him, and his strange
face grew inordinately still with thought. What had cast the mettle of this
man, that he could sit behind a Rider in stillness, unshaken? What had made
him what he was?

I remembered his eyes when I had called him Hero, the dull shimmer of them
through the manic laughter. They were like the visors of the Hunt -- at once
opaque and endless. Perhaps our Hero had his own wild magic at the heart. I
could only hope. Hope was all I had left.

)0(

At first, the empty streets and silent houses didn't really register with
Mulder, but after a time he began to find it strange that there were no
other vehicles, that all lights but the streetlights were dim. For the first
time that evening, he began to get a real sense of otherworldliness. He
watched with greater concentration as the shadowed world rushed by, and saw
dim shapes flutter by, strange faces peering out at him from trees and rocks
and abandoned cars. A strange, fey feeling shivered over his spine. He
wondered if he were to look into a mirror what would look back at him.

He realized that they were moving into the industrial district, and shook
his head in open disbelief when they stopped in front of a rundown
warehouse. "What the hell ever happened to hollow hills?" he muttered as he
dismounted.

Tricky was beside him, his sharply curved ears seeming to pick up the
smallest comment. "City developers. Three hundred years ago, this was a
Hill. We move slowly in this land, and give up our Places grudgingly. In
time, it may lose it's magic, but for now, it's home." His smile was wild
and sharp-toothed as he gestured for Mulder to precede him into the dark maw
of the building.

He sensed rather than saw the many that lined his path into the heart of the
Faery stronghold. They snatched at the edges of his vision, strange,
almost-human shapes that watched him with intense interest. He heard more
than one disappointed sigh, and ruefully nodded his agreement. He wasn't
sure he'd want someone who looked like him walking in if he were hoping for
a saviour.

At the heart of warehouse was a raised dais, lit softly from all directions.
A green cloaked figure sat there, hooded and small in an ornate chair shaped
from what was obviously a living tree. First Harry and then Tricky bowed low
before it, a slow graceful movement. Mulder inclined his head slightly, but
made no move to obeisance. He simply watched the hooded figure, and waited.

At last the woman nodded, and cast back the hood. "Welcome, Hero. I do
believe my sweet Puck has chosen well."

Mulder felt his the ground sway beneath him, and he fell to his knees in
both supplication and denial. "Mom?"

)0(

The Hero's face was as white as a Sluagh's belly, and I thought he might
collapse. Apparently Harry thought the same thing, for he was beside him,
putting a tree-trunk arm around the swaying man. For a moment I frowned at
the Lady, a look she accepted with a gracious nod and inscrutable smile.
Unkind, m'Lady, most unkind, even if it was very clever.

Harry brought Hero to his feet, moved him up so that he could sit against
the Lady's chair. "Mom?" he repeated in a strange, strangled voice, reaching
out to her. The Lady flowed beneath his fingers like water, shifted, became
a smaller woman with hair the color of copper.

"I am all things, all women," she replied in a voice as glacial as the blue
of her eyes. A sudden gout of red streamed down her face, splashed his
upturned visage. She shifted again, becoming smaller still, and wraith
thin -- a ghost with dark pigtails. "You have to help me, Fox. You have to
help me!" the small ghost pleaded, reaching out phantom hands to the Hero.
She shifted again, became the redhead, bleeding still. "You have to save us
all, Mulder, for without the Maiden we are incomplete, we are consumed from
within." Another shift, and the silver-haired crone appeared, plump face
slack and contorted on one side. "Help us, son. Bring back the Maiden."

The Hero surged up, grabbed the Lady by her green mantle. "Stop it, stop it
now!" There was shocked silence in the Hall; his harsh breathing echoed like
thunder. "I said I'd help, you don't have to use goddamned lies to convince
me!" he hissed.

The contortion smoothed from the crone face, and something very like
gentleness replaced it. She reached up and with terrible strength made his
hands release, then clasped them tenderly against her breast. "It isn't
trickery, Hero. I am all these women, they are in me. I feel what they feel,
I am what they are. I am the mirror of the world," she explained softly.

The Hero sank back down, to kneel before her. "You know where my sister is?"
he asked, his voice small, as though he feared the answer.

The Lady's eyes clouded. "The Maiden is a part of me, but that is all I
have. The rest of her is gone from me." She reached out, stroked his face
with a gentle hand. "That doesn't mean she is dead," she offered against the
rising despair we all saw in his eyes. "Just that she has been moved beyond
my realms." She sat back, released him. All gentleness left her. "So, Hero.
Do you accept the cause? Will you give your life? Will you bring back the
Light?"

He stood again, body bowstring taut and jangling with the wild magic I had
sensed in him earlier. "I'll take it, provided you all obey me completely. I
can't be responsible otherwise."

The Lady nodded. "We are in your hands, Hero."

He nodded firmly, turned to face the hall. "First of all, I need all the
data you have on the kidnappers, to begin building a profile them and their
methods. That way we can use their weaknesses against them. Secondly, I want
Owein's horn." He held out his hand to me, hazel eyes glittering and fey. A
part of me was absolutely terrified. Another part wanted to crow with
laughter and kiss our Hero. Oh, I was not the only Tricky one here tonight.

)0( 


Sans Merci

by Brighid

Mulder watched as Tricky -- or was it Puck? -- opened his robe and unslung
the battered brass horn. The grin that came with the horn was a wild mix of
feral and shit-eating. "Nice to know I'm not the only Trickster left," he
said. "Cunning young fox. You're going to set us all on our ears, aren't
you, Hero?" he laughed. "You do know how to use that thing, don't you?"

Mulder hefted the horn, tested the weight of it, before slinging it over his
neck. "You just pucker up and blow," he deadpanned. Puck threw back his head
and laughed, the long line of his neck tender and exposed. Another image
superimposed itself over the Trickster, and for a moment Mulder was almost
able to pinpoint the resemblance, but it was gone again when a long line of
faery, gnomes, dwarves and pixies formed, ready to help Mulder build his
profile. He shrugged and let the moment pass. It couldn't be that important.
He set down on the edge of the dais, and began to build a strategy.

)0(

Midmorning saw us mounted up behind the Wild Hunt or trooping winding roads
to the Unseelie stronghold on the outskirts of town. We were a ghostly
procession, scarcely marking the road. Many of us were little more than
shades in the pitiless bright; we were creatures of moonlight and mystery,
and the daylight world was both strange and terrible.

Some wilder sprites had wanted to storm their defenses at dawn, but our Hero
had overruled them. "Daylight is even more difficult for them than you," he
had reasoned. "The weight of popular folklore must damn near bind them to
their stronghold. High noon should see them at their weakest. That'll give
us the advantage."

Now he perched behind the lead Rider, incongruous in a pair of hide breeches
someone had lent him and the running jacket he'd been wearing the night
before. He sat with surprising grace, long body seeming boneless and at ease
behind the silent Rider who carried him. Only the faint clenching of his
jaw, the random flutters of his hands over the sides of his body betrayed
the tension within.

Harry had chosen to trot alongside me, enjoying the chance to stretch his
legs, to move freely in the world when no one might startle at his ugliness
or size. Today we moved completely in the Land, not daring to slip into the
mortal realm. He, too, looked decidedly odd, having given up his old,
knotted club for a bright plastic super-soaker water rifle. It had been hard
going trying to find propylene gloves to cover his callused paws, but one of
the foragers had managed to find a "big and tall" section in the local
workman's supply store.

He saw me looking at the neon atrocity he lugged, and shook his head. "I be
looking a right idiot, don' I?" he offered with another one of his alarming
smiles. "Still, this Hero of yours has the right of it, don' he? Gots
strategy, he has, and clever ideas. He's another tricky one, thinking
sideways like you."

I returned his smile. "It's the gift of mortals, why they make the best
Heroes. They're not locked into time and tradition like we are. They can do
the most unexpected things!" I looked around, saw a treesister almost
swallowed by her protective gloves and squirt gun, a dwarf cursing steadily
under the weight of the power tools he carried. He scarcely needed any
protection at all, though; being a miner and metal smith, he had no need to
fear mortal iron. "And isn't the unexpected wonderful?" I laughed aloud,
causing a few to turn their heads briefly. I was used to their glances, and
they didn't trouble me at all.

"Can be," huffed Harry as we moved up a particularly steep incline. "Mostly
if it be the Sluagh and soul-suckers who's all unexpecting!" He tested the
weight of the water rifle he carried, the slow slosh of the contents. He
seemed to find comfort in it, but I noticed he was very careful not to let
it rest too close to his body, for which I was grateful. Trolls smell strong
enough; a singed troll would take weeks to clear the nose.

)0(

A quarter of a mile before the target, he made them halt, dismount the bikes
and leave the Riders behind. They moved in slow silence towards the
kidnappers' hideout; it was critical that they take them unawares.

Mulder snorted at his internal phrasing. Kidnappers. Hideout. He glanced
briefly behind him, and at the assortment of pookahs, kobolds, manitou and
sidhe who followed him. Who the hell was he trying to kid? He was the Hero
about to storm the Unseelie Court and release the New Moon. He could almost
feel Scully grasping his face, pulling at his lids and checking his pupils.

Soon enough they reached the stronghold, a dilapidated old dump that was now
little more than a sea of mouldering debris. Mulder stopped at the landfill
fence, heavy metal links bound with barbed wire. "So this is where the
bogeyman hides out, is it?" he said quietly to Puck, who'd sidled up
alongside him. "Remind me to kick the bastard in the 'nads when I meet him.
I owe him a few."

"He doesn't have 'nads. Pulling his nose will probably do just as well," the
Trickster offered gravely. Mulder eyed him with displeasure.

"You people are determined to shoot all my illusions to hell, aren't you?"
he muttered. "Get the dwarves over here. I want through this fence before we
start to attract too much attention. Position the trolls around the
perimeter, and anyone with wings can do recon. Got it?" /Anyone with wings?
Fuck./

Puck grinned knowingly, seeing the thought flicker through Mulder's eyes.
"Yes, well, we're not trained federal agents, but we do have some
advantages," he said, only slightly mocking.

His forces deployed to his liking, Mulder waited with thin patience as two
stocky dwarves cut their way through the fence. The metal was still hot, and
branded him as he led them into the yard. At the center of the lot there was
a battered garage and connected outbuildings. In all probability, their
victim was in there, but it was a long hard course to reach it, and no
telling what sort of tripwires and booby-traps lay in between them and their
goal.

"Not to mention wards," supplied Puck quietly, green eyes slitted against
the mid-day sun. Mulder's own gaze narrowed at that.

/Are you crawling around inside my head?/ Mulder watched, saw the
Trickster's mouth tighten slightly, as if biting down a smile. /I wouldn't,
if I were you. It's a fucking messy place, with tripwires and wards of its
own./

Puck reached out, barely brushed the agent's temple. "I've been around
millennia. You've nothing in there I haven't seen before." His voice was
husky, taunting, and the gleam behind his still-lowered lids made Mulder
squirm. The faery withdrew his hand, returned his gaze to the junkyard. "So
what do we do now, Hero?"

Mulder swept his gaze left to right, then shrugged. "Fan out and around,
closing in from all angles. Nail anything that gets in the way. Fight until
we win. Or we die." Mulder grinned, and it was shit-eating at its best.
"We're all heroes here," he laughed, and it felt better than he could have
imagined.

)0(

Our Hero was nothing if not accurate. Nail anything that gets in the way.
Such a poetry the man has. Eleven feet in we stumbled over a nest of
sleeping boggarts, nasty wee things with sharp little teeth. Street-gang
brownies, to put in human terms. They hissed and snarled and tried to swarm
the treesister who had brushed against the gutted old dresser they were in.
Mulder had the nail gun up and pumping before she could do more than cry
'ware.

Soon enough there were eight dead boggarts, nailed through by cold iron.
They hissed and popped and sizzled, and the smell was enough to turn a
stomach. I watched as the last of them dissolved into a brackish mess on the
compacted earth. "Between their screaming and the smell, the others will be
rousing," I cautioned, even as slow skitterings began, and the sheds rustled
into grudging life. Dark things, nasty things, welled out into the sunlight,
and though it was noon, the light seemed to flicker and dim in their
presence.

I raised my super-soaker high, aimed it at the first to cross me, a pale and
bloated Sluagh, and let go with a jet of blessed water. It smoked and whined
and staggered, but lurched towards me still. The soft whump-whump of
compressed air sounded behind me, and a series of spikes blossomed in the
Sluagh's pasty face. Dark brackish blood fountained out, and I jumped back
to avoid its corrosive spill. I turned to find a dark-skinned dwarf smiling
with wicked glee.

"I could," he said ruminatively, his voice like granite on glass, "get used
to this."

I laughed at that, and together we continued our assault.

)0(

Fox Mulder fired the compression nail-gun with measured precision,
destroying all manner of things that crossed his path as he worked his way
to the Unseelie stronghold. Initially he'd been afraid of accidentally
killing one of his own with 'friendly fire', but there was no mistaking the
ones he'd come with for these - brutes. Everything about them, from their
cunning faces to their sharp, sharp mouths made him recoil in horror. He
tasted the memory of every nightmare he'd ever had as he dispatched one
monster after another.

A shrill cry rent the air, and he spun around to see an ugly, hulking
man-shape bend over the torn body of a bird-headed woman, dipping something
into the dark blood that slicked her spilling intestines. The man stood, and
set a cap on his head, wet and glistening. Stray folklore whispered a name
in Mulder's ear. Red Cap. They dyed their scarlet caps in the blood of their
victims, and they were the most vicious of fighters. And this was most
definitely a Red Cap.

Shit.

He lifted the nail-gun at the Red Cap even as it began to bear down upon
him, but though it staggered under the impact of the iron, hissed and
smoked, it did not leave off or fall back. A hungry smile twisted its face,
revealing razor teeth the colour of arterial blood. Mulder let the nail-gun
drop, and reached for the neon-coloured water rifle slung over his shoulder,
sighted carefully and fired a stream of blessed water into the gaping mouth
of the Red Cap just as it came within grasping reach.

For a moment it simply hovered there, one foot still raised, and then it
wavered and contorted and howled. A heartbeat later and it exploded, a
stinking fountain of brackish viscera and bone. Mulder stepped back, but
caught some of the spray; it burned like acid. He spared himself a squirt of
the blessed water, and while it eased the sting, he could already see a
pattern of scorched skin over his hands and arms. With a shrug he turned
away from the fetid remains of the Red Cap and continued on his mission to
the outbuildings.

)0(


Sans Merci

by Brighid

We met outside the main building, Hero, Harry and I, and together we
breached the door. It was darker than a moonless night inside, save for a
wan glimmering in the depths. I felt Her presence, small and weak,
fluttering like a dying moth against the edges of my mind. "She's in here,"
I said softly, but not softly enough.

"That she is, Puck, and so are you, and none of you will be leaving." I
turned to find Himself standing behind me, tall and elegant and utterly
amused. "Still finding Heroes, then, Puck? Still doing Her bidding as you as
you once did mine? Still her puppet as you have been ever since these
miserable mortals won Her heart away from us?" he asked conversationally,
companionably.

"Better finding Heroes then breeding vipers," I replied, looking him square
in the eye, not backing down a whit. How strange, that in the midst of all
this ugliness, he should still be so beautiful. "Ruadan, this ill becomes
you. She trusted you."

"She sits and does nothing while all we are falls into oblivion," he
countered, gilt face darkening into anger. "Our Halls are dust and our
sacred hills defiled. Mortals destroy everything in creation and forget all
that we have given them. Their feeble brains only manage to cling to the
darkest bits, the bogeyman and the vampire, and so that is where the only
real power is left." He waved his hand, an arrogant gesture of dismissal.
"So be it. Better to reign in hell, as they say." He smiled, then, a dark
and twisted expression. "If the Unseelie are the only ones strong enough
left, so be it. It is time we took back what is ours by right."

"And who says it's yours?" Hero asked then; his voice was soft and
reasonable, and it chilled me to the core. "Who gave you that right?"

)0(

He was not what Mulder had expected. Somewhere in his imaginings, the Lord
of the Unseelie Court had been painted as a monster: a giant, perhaps, or an
ogre of some sort. Maybe even some towering, demonic figure. Not once had he
envisioned a tall, elegant man with golden skin and dark, dark hair that
curled and waved over broad shoulders. The only thing monstrous about Ruadan
was his arrogance. He was a monster in the same way the Smoker and kind were
monsters, and quite suddenly Mulder was blazingly angry.

"Who gave you that right?" Mulder repeated, softly, but the rage behind the
words was unmistakable, and Ruadan caught the steel beneath the velvet; his
gaze sharpened as it took in the displaced federal agent standing before
him.

"The right was always mine for the taking," Ruadan said at last, his voice
lazy, a little mocking. "We were here when your kind were still picking
fleas off one another. We were the Lords of All, and you were nothing more
than animals that learned to walk upright. We gave you music, art and poetry
and you twisted it and smeared it and muddied it and never understood what
we gave you. You are still animals, nothing more." The words were cool,
almost without rancour, and that in itself was enough to make Mulder
shudder, an odd mixture of revulsion and rage. He bit back a low growl.

Ruadan saw Mulder's anger, and dismissed it with a contemptuous smile.
"Little hero. Little truth seeker. You should know by now that some truths
are ultimately unpalatable. It does not make them any less true." He reached
out, stroked a long, manicured finger along Mulder's cheek. For a moment,
Mulder saw stained, yellow skin, and caught the scent of spent matches.

"I've seen what your kind would do, seen what they've left behind," Mulder
spat back at Unseelie Lord, thrusting Ruadan's hand far from his face,
scrubbing at his cheek. "Little virgin girls, spread open on their pink
sheets, raped and spoiled and polluted by your filth. Is that your art,
Ruadan? Is that your poetry? Is your medium the blood and bone of the
innocent? Is that all that's left of you, the ugliness, the monstrous, the
profane? Does your power lie only in the defilement of children? That makes
you the animal here, you bastard, not me, not my kind." Mulder raised his
nail gun up, pumped several into Ruadan's face in rapid succession so that a
rusty crown of thorns sprang up, and the darkness inside him spilled out,
made him ugly. Mulder shuddered at it, felt an answering darkness inside
himself, and hated it.

"Enough! I have no patience for you!" Ruadan snarled, plucking the nails
out. "There is no room for Heroes anymore, mortal. Hasn't everything in your
wretched, pathetic little life taught you that?" Ruadan leaned in close, and
his voice shifted, became the voice of William Mulder. The breath on
Mulder's cheek was suddenly laced with whisky, and a hint of cigarette
smoke. "God damn you, son. We trusted you with her. It was your watch, boy.
Couldn't you just have kept her safe?" The voice shifted, became the voice
of  Walter Skinner. "And where did Agent Scully go, Agent Mulder? Don't you
have any answers for that?" Mulder closed his eyes, tried to cover his ears,
but Ruadan found a way in, this time an echo of Bill Scully. "You sorry son
of a bitch," hissed along his cheek, his neck, etched him like acid, the
same pattern that had been cut into him his whole life.

Mulder tore his hands from his ears, shoved hard into Ruadan's body,
thrusting the Unseelie Lord away. "If I don't matter, why are you working so
damn hard to convince me of that?" Mulder ground out through gritted teeth.
"Why the guards? The hidey-hole in the middle of this human wasteland?
Because you're weak? Because you need us, as much as you despise us? Because
our belief is the only thing that makes you fucking real? And our belief can
unmake you, too, isn't that it, Ruadan? You hate us, simply because we've
forgotten you, because we don't fucking need you anymore." Mulder grinned
wildly at the Unseelie Lord, his breath coming in short, sharp pants, like
the home stretch of a marathon. "Now who's the sorry son of a bitch, you
petty little bastard?"

Ruadan snarled, his face twisting in blackest rage. "I have no need of you,
mortal, or any of your stinking kind. After tonight, you will be first
amongst those sacrificed to me, and then we shall see who needs whom!" He
raised his hands, clapped them together, and two Sluagh's came in, dragging
a struggling girl between them. "Look at her, Hero. Twenty-five years later,
and you will lose her all over again."

She was small and dark-haired, the girl that the Lady had shown them
earlier. Mulder reached out, a small, strangled noise escaping him. "Sam,"
he cried, sobbed. "Oh, christ, Sam!"

She was in his arms, saying his name over and over again, burying her face
in his chest. His hands wove together in her hair, loosening the tight
braids until he could weave himself in. He held on so tight, knowing it was
illusion, fearing it was as close as he'd ever come to reality. After a
long, long moment he tilted her face up, kissed her cheeks and swollen eyes.
"You will rise again," he promised, and it was truth, a truth, the greatest
weapon of the Hero.

"Get out," he whispered back to Harry and Puck, his voice low and rough.
"Get out, fall back and run like hell." He turned his gaze to Ruadan, whose
tarnished-gilt face was snarled in scorn. They stood locked in silent battle
for many long moments.

"It will do them no good," Ruadan said at last, shaking his head. "When the
Dark Moon stays, the New Moon dies, and so do they. You're merely delaying
the inevitable, Hero."

Mulder smiled at Ruadan, an ugly, ugly expression. "I don't think so,
Ruadan. Despite all your claims to superiority, you forget that you're not
the first ones, either. There are ones older than you, more powerful than
you, and you cannot control them, you cannot subdue them." He listened
carefully, heard the single, piercing note that signaled the all-clear.
"Unless, of course, you have this." He pulled out Owein's battered brass
horn from under his running jacket. He blew a single, discordant blast on it
even as Ruadan surged forward, lunged to wrest the horn away.

A dark Rider appeared between them, and this time the rack of horns, the
pawing steed were neither ghost nor echo. Mulder pulled the Maiden in close
to his body, held her as he wished he'd held her over twenty-five years ago.
"We two will remain untouched -- everything else within the borders of the
fence: Unmake. Undo. Uncreate them all."  The Rider nodded once, drawing his
sword and making a noise like a wild stallion. There was a whirl of light,
and for a moment Ruadan's head trembled, then fell, then was nothing at all.
Mulder dropped down to his knees, the Maiden clutched within his arms, and
together they closed their eyes against the maelstrom that ensued.

)0(

From the outside, it was a terrifying sight to behold. The Hunt was
ruthless, efficient, but beneath it all was a sort of cold pleasure that
chilled me, chilled us all. They were the oldest magick, the wildest, and as
unknowable as the stars themselves. They were the last bit of Chaos that the
universe could contain without falling back in on itself; watching them cut
through the Unseelie Court was like watching the end of all things.

At long last there was stillness, silence absolute. "By th'Lady," Harry
breathed, but that was a frail, fragile blessing in light of what we'd just
witnessed.

"Here he comes!" a small voice called, and I looked up and over to see our
Hero striding out of the far building, the Maiden clutched in his arms, the
Wild Hunt following behind, wolves temporarily shoved back into sheep's
clothing. When he reached the gate he handed the Maiden over the to the Lead
Rider.

"Take her back where she belongs," he said gruffly, his voice thick with
something so far beyond sorrow there were many amongst our company who would
have wept if we'd had the knack of tears. He turned back to the company,
made an impatient gesture with both his hands. "All of you, go on. You'll be
calling attention to yourselves if you all hang around here. That's the last
thing you need!"  Quick as that they shifted away, slid between worlds,
leaving nail guns and water pistols behinds as the only evidence of the
battle fought. I caught Harry's eye, nodded for him to leave. He clapped our
Hero gently, staggeringly so, on the shoulder, then slid himself into the
skin of the shambling vagrant that hid him from mortal eyes.

"So," I said, and then left it hanging between us. "I guess I'll be taking
the horn back, then?"

He smiled at me; there was a sharpness to it, something of the fox there,
and that made me want to laugh. "I don't remember ever agreeing to give it
back," he said drily. "I think that it might still prove useful, for awhile
at least." His hazel eyes darkened, and his smile grew sharper still. "There
are other Unseelie Courts, other dark things in need of unmaking," he said
softly, and I shuddered at his words, even though I had expected them. This,
too, was part of the reason why he had been chosen.

"So be it," I agree. "I suggest that it's time we get you back to where you
belong, then, Hero, let you get back to your own crusades." /Back to your
own nightmares and monsters and things that go bump in the night,/ I added,
inside his head.

"Get the fuck out of there," he said amiably, tucking the horn back in next
to his body. /There be dragons,/ he added wryly, not knowing that I already
knew his dragons, knew them intimately, as only one serpent can know
another. He was a Trickster, too, that one lying in the garden.

)0(

Somehow their walk moved them through time as well as space, and Mulder
found himself back on the bridge, back at midnight, only this time there was
thin, sharp-edged crescent of moon cutting it's way through the cloud cover.
"We did it, then?" he asked the Trickster. "No more dead little girls?" he
continued, wistfully.

Puck shook his head. "Not so simple, Hero. There are always more dead little
girls, always more monsters than Hero's or even Tricksters." He leaned
forward, pressed a sudden, surprising kiss against Mulder's cheek. "The
secret is, the Heroes cannot ever give up, nor the Trickster's either." His
breath was hot and sweet on Mulder's cheek, and the green of his eyes flared
darkly with some hidden emotion. "The victory lies as much in the trying as
the doing, you know. There's a truth, freely given."

Mulder watched, open-mouthed, as Puck walked away, robes shifting and
changing into tight jeans and a leather jacket, left arm straightening and
stiffening against the side of his body. "Jesus Christ, Krycek! Krycek!"
Mulder shouted to the retreating figure, both furious and somehow wildly
pleased at the same time. "You fucking asshole, Krycek!"

The Trickster turned, smiled at him with Krycek's smile and flipped him off.
"And I'm all yours, Mulder," he replied. "As much as a Trickster can be, at
any rate. That's a truth, though not without a price." Krycek blew him
another kiss, then disappeared into the mists even as Mulder felt the world
slide out from underneath him, and the cold concrete rush up to meet his
face.

Great. Another concussion. Scully was going to have his balls for this.

)0(

Mulder awoke gradually to hospital sounds and hospital smells. He drifted on
the edge of unconsciousness awhile longer, delaying the inevitable, but
Scully would have none of it.

"You should probably know by now I can read your EKG, Mulder," she said
drily, flipping up one tightly scrunched eyelid. "Welcome back to the land
of the living. For now, at least. Until Skinner and I get through with you."

"The little girls?" Mulder rasped, his head aching and fogged with
half-remembered things. Pointed ears, green eyes, the low growl of
motorcycles all fought for some sort of clarity in his mind.

"It stopped. Utterly. Not a single new body in the four weeks you've been
missing," Scully replied. "That have anything to do with you?" She sat down
on the edge of his bed, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, and for a
moment Mulder remembered other hands, the of the touch of the Lady. She was
there, in Scully's hands, in the soft halo of hospital lights behind her
head, making her skin more porcelain, her hair more titian. For a moment he
was lost in contemplation of her, until at last her words sank into his
sluggish brain.

"Four weeks?" he rasped, struggling to sit up, but he was exhausted and weak
and Scully pushed him back down with unflattering ease.

"Four weeks, not a word, until some early morning jogger found you
yesterday, lying on the pavement wearing your running jacket and pair of
leather pants."  She raised her eyebrows at him, obviously waiting for him
to explain the leather pants.

Mulder groaned. "Four weeks! Four fucking weeks!" A sudden thought occurred
to him, and this time not even Scully could hold him down. "I had a horn, a
brass horn. Where is it?" he demanded, tumbling out of the bed, staggering
wildly about, hospital gown swinging indecently around him as he started
turning the semi-private room upside down.

"Easy. Easy, Mulder. Get back in bed! It was entered into evidence at the
local Bureau office. Right now we're treating your disappearance as a
kidnapping," Scully said soothingly, trying to maneuver him back to the bed,
despite his best attempts to evade her.

"You've got to get it back, Scully, you've got to get it back!" Mulder
pleaded, his voice a raspy wail. "I need it, I need it, you have to get it,
Scully!" He grabbed her shoulders, bruisingly hard. "It's our weapon against
Them. The Unseelie, the unclean," he cried hoarsely into her neck as she
walked him back over to his bed.

"Whatever you say," Scully said, placatingly, shoving him up into the bed,
tucking the covers in around him. "Only thing is, it was stolen out of
evidence almost immediately."

Mulder's face crumpled, and his hands reached up, twined into Scully's hair.
Underneath his fingers, he felt the Maiden's soft, dark braids, felt Sam's
tender scalp. "Oh no. Owein's horn. Oh no. oh no," he sobbed, and Scully
hung onto him, pulled him in close, and tried to still the trembling that
ran through him.

"Shhhh, Mulder, it's okay, it's going to be okay," she crooned softly,
meaninglessly, and he couldn't bring himself to believe it just then, just
yet, although a part of him knew he would, eventually.

Belief has always been, after all, the way of Heroes.

)0(

An End